OREANDA-NEWS. October 03, 2016. For the second year in a row, Salesforce is honored to be named a Market Leader in Ovum’s Decision Matrix “Selecting a CRM Solution for Telecoms, 2016–17.” The report clearly establishes Salesforce as a market leader and “a force to reckon with” in the telecommunications CRM space. This significant recognition is a direct result of Salesforce’s strong momentum and customer success in the communications industry, which has also contributed to Salesforce winning a prestigious award from TM Forum for Enabling Customer Centricity in the TM Forum Live! 2016 event in Nice, France.

The above graphic was published by Ovum as part of a larger research document and should be evaluated in the context of the entire document. Download the entire report here.

Here are some highlights of Ovum’s assessment of Salesforce:

  • “SaaS service provider Salesforce plays a dominant role in the CRM space across industries, telecoms inclusive. Commencing operations in the sales automation space, the vendor has now extended functionalities to include customer service, marketing, order management, and other CRM platform capabilities such as analytics, social, and mobility.”
  • “Salesforce obtained one of the highest scores for technology assessment, and recorded high scores for sales automation, customer services and case management, and analytics and reporting tools. All seven core products are based on a single platform, which includes a single data model and a single set of administration capabilities. This single platform includes call center, retail store, online, social, and mobile apps. These channels are fully integrated, and so enable the easy transfer of interactions from one channel to the other in real time. Consequently, telcos that have invested in the Salesforce CRM have the opportunity to move very swiftly to delivering omnichannel experience.”
  • “To further extend its functions and the operational efficiency delivered by the Salesforce CRM platform, the vendor engages with telco software providers like CloudSense, Sigma Systems, and Vlocity to deliver telco-specific capabilities such as configure, price, quote (CPQ). These capabilities use the same resources generated from the Salesforce platform, which are also used by the core Salesforce products. This approach allows for easy integration of all products.”
  • “In our execution assessment, the vendor recorded high scores in the areas of scalability, innovation, and partner ecosystem. The vendor is in constant communication with clients to understand their requirements and solicits their input in developing new features. The outcomes of these interactions are included in releases, which are rolled out three times a year. Its partner ecosystem, AppExchange, is a broad ecosystem of software providers creating capabilities that can be developed either directly on the Salesforce CRM platform, as with Vlocity and CloudSense, or outside the platform, as with Comptel and Sigma Systems. In either case, these capabilities can be integrated seamlessly with the Salesforce CRM platform using the Salesforce Communications Industry Framework. Given this approach, telco clients buying into the Salesforce CRM gain access to not just the capabilities provided by Salesforce, but also to the applications developed by other software providers.”
  • “Given the maturity of the Salesforce CRM product and the intent of telcos to adopt cloud-based offerings, Salesforce is well positioned to capitalize on opportunities in this vertical. While the vendor does not provide guidance on its telecoms revenue performance, telecoms is among its six focus verticals. Salesforce does, however, need to prove its capabilities to support not just B2B customer segments but the B2C space as well. However, it has growing momentum in B2C with customers including Virgin Media, Telus, Sky Italia, and DirecTV. Core to its business roadmap for 2016 is to increase market awareness of its capabilities in the B2C space with a view to generating new customer references that would then be used to drive new customer wins.
  • “Salesforce's success in the CRM space proves the benefit that cloud-based offerings can bring to the telecoms space. CSPs looking to deliver a unified omnichannel customer experience, with strong functionality for social and mobile channels and the ability to extend the partner ecosystem, must consider the Salesforce CRM solution.”

“We are incredibly proud and honored to be named by Ovum a market leader,” says Andy Baer, Senior Vice President, Communications and Media, Salesforce. “In the communications industry, Salesforce has been helping service providers improve their ability to connect with their customers in a whole new way, and in doing so, improve their business performance. Our customer success is what contributed to this amazing recognition.”